Dr. Meir Kryger, professor of medicine (pulmonary), has received the Mary A. Carskadon Outstanding Educator Award for 2013 from the Sleep Research Society (SRS).
The award, established in 2005, is presented annually to honor excellence in education related to sleep medicine and research. It is given to an investigator for an outstanding effort in disseminating basic or clinical sleep and circadian research as a mentor, teacher, or through public education. This award honors an educator whose contributions can include training of others who have contributed to sleep or circadian research, writings that educate others in sleep or circadian research, or administration and organization of teaching efforts in sleep or circadian research.
Kryger, who has published more than 200 research articles and book chapters, is the chief editor of the most widely used text book in sleep medicine, “The Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine,” currently in its fifth edition. He is also the author of “A Woman's Guide to Sleep Disorders.” His recent books are “The iGuide to Sleep,” published in 2009, the “Atlas of Clinical Sleep Medicine,” published in 2010, and “Kryger’s Sleep Medicine Review,” published in 2011.
The Yale professor was the first to diagnose and report obstructive sleep apnea in North America, and his laboratory was the first to show the feasibility of ventilating people with post-polio syndrome at home using non-invasive techniques. His laboratory also elucidated the interaction between heart failure and sleep respiration, and published the first systematic study of oxygen in this condition. He reported the first use of computers in analyzing sleep breathing patterns and validated techniques of monitoring in which diagnostic data as well as therapeutic data on continuous positive airway pressure is obtained during the same night.
Kryger joined the faculty of the School of Medicine and the staff of VA Connecticut Health System in 2011. Previously he was director of Sleep Research and Education at Gaylord Sleep Medicine, in Wallingford, Connecticut, and before that he was a professor of medicine at the University of Manitoba and director of the Sleep Disorders Centre at St. Boniface Hospital Research Centre in Winnipeg. This was the first clinical laboratory to study patients with sleep breathing problems in Canada.
The SRS is an organization for scientific investigators who educate and research sleep and sleep disorders. The SRS facilitates its goals through the annual SLEEP meeting, the Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, held in conjunction with the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. The SRS also hosts educational courses on sleep-related topics, co-publishes the journal SLEEP, produces educational products for high school through doctoral level students, and provides volunteer opportunities for regular and student members.